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DJ Rupture Augments Western Music Software With Middle Eastern Sounds

In a 2008 interview Jace Clayton laid out a manifesto of sorts. “I don’t care what ‘Westerners’ fetishize. They’ve been fetishizing black people for centuries now, who cares? You simply exist in all your complexity and let them deal with it.”

Since he came to prominence over a decade ago through his border-melting work as DJ / rupture, Jace has continued to argue against a cohesive narrative of identity production. Long before the mashup, rupture was rocking three turntables and pulling Project Pat, Paul Simon, and Japanese noise god Hanatarash into his legendary sets. His music criticism and writing makes equally unexpected and satisfying turns, arguing for auto-tune as a cyborg embrace or exploring geopolitical complexity through the club scene in Cyprus.

His latest project, Sufi Plug-Ins, gets even weirder. It tells the story of his ongoing love affair with Morocco through a set of seven free audio tools designed for the audio sequencing program Ableton Live. This is a world where Berber women build drum machines and synthesizers silence themselves in time for prayer.